On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: > On Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 03:40:50PM +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote: > > What does dpkg do in the case of circular dependencies? > > It breaks the cycle (I'm not sure by which criteria) and configures the > packages in the newly-defined order.
APT breaks these cycles by configuring at the first sign of looping. It uses a depth first type search on an ordered list of packages (considering provides), so effectively which package will be configured first is dependent on lots of factors. For configuring dpkg will follow APT's order until it hits a loop, in which case it applies it's loop breaking algorithm which looks for packages without post-inst scripts - otherwise it picks a link and breaks it. Jason
